Hardware Store Out of History Yields to Reality

By Sue Anne Pressley Montes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2007

When Candey Hardware opened in downtown Washington, Benjamin Harrison was president. The year was 1891, and the store sold buggy whips and harnesses, turpentine and nails, and soap powder scooped from 100-pound drums.

For decades, through five generations of Candeys, the small hardware store prospered as downtown evolved and the suburbs expanded. But this fall, the family has decided to close the business, citing a drop-off of customers and a changed retail environment that revolves more these days around big chain stores in outlying areas.

"I know I'm going to miss it," said current owner Gwen Loftin, 73, the great-granddaughter of founder Josiah Candey. "But I can't keep butting my head against a brick wall."

Loftin said the store has lost a hundred customers a day in the past few years. The family plans to sell the 1929 building at 1210 18th St. NW, which is actually the store's third location in the vicinity. For customers who have long depended on Candey's convenience and old-fashioned service, the news is another example of a world losing its originality and retail charm.

"It really reminds me of places I knew as a kid," said economist Roger Claassen, who sprinted over from a nearby Department of Agriculture office to have a key made. "I'll miss it just for the atmosphere."

Candey Hardware looks as though it belongs to another time, with its narrow, packed shelves and glass front with the name double-painted in script. John Woodfolk, known for more than 20 years as "the Key Man," presides over the constantly grinding key machine in front, and up in the balcony, bookkeeper Eugenia Evans, a 29-year employee, balances the accounts. Old tools hang from the ceiling, and a dollar bill spent by Teddy Roosevelt in 1918 is framed on a wall.

When Loftin took over the store 29 years ago after the death of her husband, Roy, there were about 30 small hardware stores in the District, she said. Now, she can think of only a handful that are left: "We're one of the later hardware stores to go.

"Things started to change in the 1980s," she said. "The small grocery stores, the mom-and-pops -- for the most part, the big stores have taken over. I guess that's what people want. But I don't want to park in some big lot and walk a mile to the store."

It is not the kind of change Josiah Candey could have foreseen when the ironmonger left London, first opening a bicycle shop in Philadelphia in the 1880s. He moved to the District in 1891, entering the hardware business in a 15-foot-wide space at 1118 M St. NW with gaslights out front.

It was a grand location, blocks from the White House (years later, a White House employee would run over to buy a bolt to secure a piano bench) and near the mansions of Massachusetts Avenue owned by the Vanderbilts, the Mellons and the like. But there still were rural elements: A dairy farm was across the street from the store for many years.

"It was residential, mostly rowhouses," said David Candey, 70, Loftin's brother, who went to work there as a small boy. "I remember delivering to those houses. I could walk because everything was a few blocks from the store."

He loved to listen to the tales of his great-uncle, W.J. Candey, a locksmith who hand-cut and hand-filed each key. W.J., who was Josiah's son, took over the business in 1917, and his skills were much in demand with the elegant set.

"He used to tell stories about the big-name families who lived on Massachusetts Avenue," David Candey said. They would flee Washington's steamy summers by going to Europe, taking their belongings along in big steamer trunks.

"They would always lose their keys, and he would make them again and again," Candey said. "He had barrels and barrels of keys."

During World War II, the hardware store sold glue by the pound, resembling bricks of hard taffy, Candey said; a furniture store nearby would melt the glue and use it in furniture-making.

"You couldn't get bags to put things in because of the war," he said. "We kept a stack of newspapers on the counter, and if you bought a dozen bolts, we'd just wrap them up, like a meat-cutter."

In 1951, George Candey, the father of David Candey and Gwen Loftin, built a store next to the original location; a Chevrolet dealership operated nearby. Loftin moved the business one block north, to its current site, 20 years ago.

Through the years, well-known people ventured in for a picture hanger, a duplicate key: actor Jack Lemmon, former first lady Bess Truman, astrologer Jeane Dixon, who lived in the neighborhood. Art collector Marjorie Phillips would send a driver over for boxes of light bulbs.

"It was one of our biggest accounts, and it was just light bulbs," Loftin said.

On a recent weekday morning, Candey Hardware seemed as lively as ever. Woodfolk, who makes 300 to 500 keys a day, was cutting one for Mike Trevelline, a lawyer whose office is nearby. Loftin's 16-year-old grandson, Ryan Mattsson, was helping out one final summer with the family business: Ryan's father, Eric, is the store's general manager.

David Candey, who operated a branch of Candey Hardware in Bel Air, Md., before closing in 2000, said it's a bittersweet time, but the family is philosophical about the change.

"It's just part of life," he said. "As you go through life, you're born, you have real days when you're thriving and productive, and then you come to an older time when it's time to look ahead."